Nitehawk Cinema & Tribeca Film Institute Summer Documentary Series present the winner of the Best Documentary Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, POINT AND SHOOT.

Q&A following the screening with Director Marshall Curry via Skype and Matthew VanDyke in person, moderated by Beth Janson (Executive Director, Tribeca Film Institute). Introduction by Max Cavanaugh (Technical Director/Programmer, Nitehawk Cinema).

Winner of the Best Documentary Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, POINT AND SHOOT follows Matt VanDyke, a timid 27-year-old with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, who left home in Baltimore in 2006 and set off on a self-described “crash course in manhood”. He bought a motorcycle and a video camera and began a three-year, 35,000-mile motorcycle trip through Northern Africa and the Middle East.

While traveling, he struck up an unlikely friendship with a Libyan hippie, and when revolution broke out in Libya, Matt joined his friend in the fight against dictator Muammar Gaddafi.  With a gun in one hand and a camera in the other, Matt fought in — and filmed — the war until he was captured by Gaddafi forces and held in solitary confinement for six months. Two-time Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry tells this harrowing and sometimes humorous story of a young man’s struggle for political revolution and personal transformation.

Point and Shoot screens as part of a new initiative by Tribeca Film Institute and Nitehawk Cinema that presents a curated series of documentaries from the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. More information can be found here.

I’d like to tell you the story of eyes that changed this world.

I ORIGINS, the second feature film from writer and director Mike Cahill, tells the story of Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), a molecular biologist studying the evolution of the eye. He finds his work permeating his life after a brief encounter with an exotic young woman (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) who slips away from him. As his research continues years later with his lab partner Karen (Brit Marling), they make a stunning scientific discovery that has far reaching implications and complicates both his scientific and spiritual beliefs. Traveling half way around the world, he risks everything he has ever known to validate his theory.

Starring: Chris Evans, Song Kang Ho, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris, Ewen Bremner, Ko Asung

It’s been 17 years since we froze the earth. The few remaining humans live on the Snowpiercer, a train on an infinite loop around the globe. For those at the front, it’s a lavish paradise of drugs and sushi in the lap of luxury; for those trapped in the tail section, life is short and cruel. But change is in the air. Curtis (Chris Evans), desperate to escape the tail of the train, plans an uprising, aided by his mentor Gilliam (John Hurt). What begins as an isolated riot explodes into a mass revolution, an all-or-nothing push to the front of the train, and a war for humanity’s future. Who will live and who will die? How far can they go? Is there hope beyond the frozen wastes?

SecretFormula presents… Spoons, Toons & Booze Goes Back To School

Featuring your Favorite Saturday Morning Cartoons + Booze & Free Cereal + a Special Menu of Cartoons All About School!

Do you miss your childhood Saturday mornings of waking up early to gorge on cereal and cartoons? If so, SecretFormula has the ultimate brunch for the kid in you…Spoons, Toons & Booze! We’ve got all your favorite Saturday morning cartoons, delicious cocktails and a free all-you-can-eat sugar cereal bar, not to mention Nitehawk Cinema’s excellent brunch menu.

Summer’s warm embrance is coming to a close, meaning we have nothing but long days staring at textbooks and memorizing multiplication tables in front of us. Wait a minute…we don’t have to go to school anymore! But to celebrate our love for the Trapper Keeper, we’re reliving our school days thru our favorite childhood cartoon characters and a special menu of cartoon episodes all about school, featuring teachers, bullies, pop quizzes, detention, pranks, wedgies, cafeteria lunches, schoolyard crushes and more!

– Over 80 cartoon series from the 1930?s through the 90?s and YOU get to choose what we watch!

– A free all you can eat cereal bar filled with all the sugary, marshmallowy, fruity, chocolatey cereal you crave! Soy and regular milk available.

– White Russian menu including “The Sonny”, a White Russian topped with Cocoa Puffs, and The Complete Breakfast – Cinnamon Toast Crunch infused rum, Bailey’s Irish Cream, iced coffee ($8).

– Cereal Shots! Drop a shot of Baileys or Kahlua in to booze up your cereal bowl!

– Test your cartoon and cereal knowledge in our STB Pop Quiz plus more contests to choose which cartoons we watch and for you to win sweet prizes from SecretFormula and Nitehawk Cinema!

Pray for daylight in Kathryn Bigelow’s cult classic vampire western NEAR DARK. A 35mm presentation!

The vampires in Near Dark certainly aren’t your fancy aristocratic elite living in a distant castle. Oh no. Instead they’re a gun-toting gang that roams the American Southwest. This “family” isn’t so into the new guy Caleb who’s been “turned” by the alluring Mae rather than killing him. The fact that caleb can’t really make a kill or pull his own weight definitely makes matters worse for the group. Still, it’s not easy being undead and so ensues a violent unfolding of action that has made an initially overlooked film into an eternal vampire classic.

Part of Nitehawk’s BITE THIS August midnite series.

Escaped convicts and the family they’ve kidnapped engage in an overnight battle with vampires on the Mexican border in Robert Rodriguez’s FROM DUSK TILL DAWN! Presented in 35mm by El Rey Network!

The ‘From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series’ will also screen in the lobby prior to the film each night!

Directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino, From Dusk Till Dawn is everything you’d want in an all action horror vampire movie. Escaped convict brothers with mental issues? Check. Sexy vampire queens? Check. Dirty jokes and deadly monsters? Check, check. Harvey Keitel as a bow-wielding pastor who lost his faith? Check. What starts out as questionable morality of two criminals who kidnap a family in order to flee into Mexico turns into a struggle of mortality as they surprisingly find themselves in an overnight battle to save their souls from bloodthirsty biker vampires. From Dusk Till Dawn is a fantastically unique twist on the generic vampire tale: unwitting visitors who find themselves fighting the undead done as only the Rodriguez/Tarantino combo could do. A big screen must see.

Part of Nitehawk’s BITE THIS August midnite series.

George A. Romero’s is-he-or-isn’t-he vampire film may just be his best! MARTIN is a special 35mm presentation that includes a post-screening Q&A with lead actor John Amplas moderated by Fangoria’s Sam Zimmerman!

The father of the modern cinematic zombie (the one and only George A. Romero) is also the creator of one of the most subtle vampire films ever made, Martin. Set in the decaying urban landscape of Pittsburgh, the film contains much of the underlying social and political concerns expressed in the his Dead works. Here we have a young man named Martin who has been sent to stay with his elderly relative. Things are a little tense between the two because dear old Martin has a tendency to kill people for their blood (with razors, not teeth). It’s never quite clear if he’s actually a vampire or just someone with mental issues but it’s this ambiguity, the focus on the fine line between reality and unreality, that makes Martin so great.

Print courtesy of the Joe Dante and Jon Davison Collection at the Academy Film Archive.

Part of Nitehawk’s BITE THIS August midnite series.

Starring: Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon

Few vampires are as cool and sexy as those in The Hunger’s love triangle. David Bowie. Catherine Deneuve. Susan Sarandon. Something strange starts to happen when a gerontologist researching sleep and aging gets entangled with a sensual vampire couple who hunt in the New York Club scene. After an incident with her lab primates expressing vampirish behavior, Dr. Sarah Roberts (Sarandon) meets a man named John (Bowie) who’s having difficulty dealing with the false promise of his lover (Deneuve). Apparently eternal life does not mean eternal youth once she’s done with you. Unfortunately, the next person is her sights for favorite is Sarah! Undead, undead, undead!

From Paul Thomas Anderson comes the dark, lovely and unique film experience that is PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE. Presented in 35mm!

When I was younger and did a stand-up gig, it would take me two weeks to recover. Sometimes I’d get so panicked that I would stutter. – Adam Sandler

“A romantic comedy as wonderful as it is strange that expands the genre to its absurdist outer limits and makes us believe.” Adam Sandler gives an amazing and unusual performance as Barry Egan, a socially impaired owner of a small novelty business, who is dominated by seven sisters and is unlikely to find love unless it finds him. When a mysterious woman comes into his life, his emotions go haywire, fluctuating between uncontrollable rage, lust and self-doubt. Oh, and he’s also be extorted by a phone sex line owner.

Part of Nitehawk’s summer program COMEDIANS IN FILM (The Serious Comedian).

Starring: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Sizemore, Rodney Dangerfield

Mickey and Mallory are a couple of psychotic serial killer lovers who kill people with joy, inventiveness, and without remorse. Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers is mesmerizing to watch and that makes sense because it’s a meditation on America’s (and the world’s) obsession with sensationalist tales and the media’s complicency in giving these stories fame. We can’t look away! A commentary of its time in the mid-1990s, twenty years later we can see how much (or how little) has changed in our consumptive media circus.